Financial Times 18,150 by PHSSTHPOK

23 comments on “Financial Times 18,150 by PHSSTHPOK”

1. Liked PAINKILLER, URBANE, DOUBLESPEAK, BIRTH and OUNCE

   So that is what GASLIGHT means!

   You had questions about the parsing of 1d & 2d. I parsed them the same way.

   Thanks for explaining ONS in 9a and how to parse MUGGLE. I got OSTENSIBLE from the crossers but it completely perplexed me and I am still not sure it is interchangeable with surface. Nor am I sure “was flat” equals LIED

   Thanks setter and Cineraria

2. I lied down is what kids might say when still learning, like I digged a hole.
   ” … such and such is the ostensible/surface meaning” sort of works if you squint.
   Done in by the NW. Had no idea of Chess the musical, or berth = slip, which I thought was where you pulled a boat out for repairs, as against its being berthed for boarding, lading etc. But hey ho, enjoyed it ntl, ta both.
   Does gaslight come from the movie?

3. I think 2d is
   batting = IN
   Position = stance
   But the other way works too

   Liked Homo sapiens v much too

   23a could also be “But” from Bout (wrestling) less o. Threw me for a bit.

4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_(1944_film)

   Yes vg film gave us the word.

5. James P@4: And before that, the play! I also had “in” = “batting” for 2d but I like the congruity that “stance” as well as being a position is also a way of describing how a batter stands. For me, clues where the surface helps to evoke the correct synonym are always that little bit higher quality.

   Another “homo sapiens” fan here, not least because of it being used correctly rather than by people who try to make it “singular”

   I found a couple of these required me to put elements in an unfamiliar order – why does “ab” come after “n” when they are the other way round in the clue? Ditto “Ar” + “She”. I guess both would be too easy the other way round, and one thing next to another is only left-right because we are biased so. In many scripts right-left is more natural.

   thank you Cineraria and phssthpok

6. Took some teasing out.. very slow start, picked up a little once a few crossers were in… as Jack..@5 I guess we have to suck up the incongruity of clue word orders, as we are often required to ignore punctuation, except when it’s vital. “BY” seems to be in common usage to indicate the addition could be at the front or the back.. so “O” in OSTENSIBLE might have been last, in comparison to “AR” in SHEAR, which might have been first.. both of which I tinkered with, which didn’t help progress much. INSTANCE was in another recent crossword, clued similarly “… BATTING POSITION FOR EXAMPLE” in the Scotsman on Sunday no less…
   Needed the blog for the finer points of the TABULA RASA n OUNCE
   thanks PHSSTHPOK n Cineraria

7. Thanks Phssthpok and Cineraria

   17ac: I had no problem at all with this one. The first definition of by in Chambers 2016 (p 211) is “at the side of”, so AR by SHE seems to me to be a fair indication for SHEAR.

   18ac: I was equally happy while solving that “at” could be used in the same way here as “by” in 17ac, but I have not managed to find clear dictionary support for that meaning of “at”.

   I was less happy with 1dn and 5dn. Each of these seemed to be using more than one distortion of word order, which is uncomfortably close to asking too much of the solver in my opinion.

8. An interesting challenge that, in the end, didn’t take too long to finish. When we got MUGGLE and FANG (Hagrid’s dog) we wondered if there were possibly more Harry Potter references, but no – and two entries don’t make a theme. And we agree with PB@7 about the unduly distorted word order in 1dn and 5dn. We thought, too, that 29ac should be enumerated (3-6) – as in Chambers.
   But there was plenty to like; favourite was HOMO SAPIENS.
   Thanks, Phssthpok and Cineraria.

9. PB@7 I don’t think there is dictionary support for the way “at” is being used in 18A either, although this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it employed as an indicator where the intended meaning is “next to” or “immediately before/after”. I note that it doesn’t appear in the lists of juxtaposition indicators in Chambers XWD Dictionary or the Clue Clinic (which is a very reliable source of information about cryptic indicators) or in any other online list I’ve consulted (including Cryptipedia-Fandom). Given that Chambers defines “at” as “denoting (precise) position in time, or some similar relation, such as amount, response, occupation, aim, activity”, it seems that “at” on its own is inadequate, and that something more such as “at the start of” or “at the end of” is needed. The Clue Clinic includes “at the end of” in its list.

10. From collinsdictionary.com:
    “If you are at something such as a table, a door, or someone’s side, you are next to it or them.

    An assistant sat typing away at a table beside him.
    Graham was already at the door.
    At his side was a beautiful young woman.
    He gave the girl at the desk the message.”

    Does this mean that one group of letters can be ‘at’ another as in ‘next to’? I suspect it will for some solvers but won’t for others.

11. bill-poster@10 You need to scroll down the entries in the online “Collins dictionary” to find the British English dictionary definitions because what appears first there is usually from the Collins COBUILD, which is a foreign learners’ aid. What you are quoting here is from the COBUILD section.

12. The later entry is vaguer…Just ‘used to indicate location or position’ with a couple of examples.

    My Oxford is similar to Chambers – ‘used to express location…’

13. 29ac: Collins 2023 gives nonlethal without the hyphen on page 1351 of the print edition. I was less happy about incorporating the abbreviation LN as part of the anagram fodder. Further, I could not find that abbreviation in my usual dictionaries or from a quick web search. Can anyone find a respectable source for LN (or NL if you like) as an abbreviation for lanthanide?

14. Yes (b-p @12) – according to the definitions given by Chambers, Collins and your Oxford, “at noon” means at (precisely) that time, and not before or after noon (or “next to” noon), so the use of “at” as an indicator having effect to place AB next to N in 18A does not appear to have any justification according to those authorities.

15. PB@13 There is an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for Ln (a former chemical symbol for Lanthanum), and an entry in Wikipedia for Lanthanide which uses the symbol Ln. I can find no reference to it as a symbol for Lanthanide in an any of the standard dictionaries used for crosswords.

16. Sorry for drip feeding, but I have at least once forgotten to comment on “tension” as an indicator for T in the answer to 5dn. I think we can allow “tension” to clue T as the symbol for a particular type of tension in the same way that we allow “sailor” (or even “salt” as in 18ac of this puzzle) to clue AB, a particular rank of sailor, or “soldier” to clue GI, a soldier in a particular country’s army. (Added in edit: I hope this is not opening floodgates that would have been better left closed.)

    Thanks Rudolf@15 re Ln.

17. Ref T = TENSION, HT for High Tension is a long-established abbreviation in electronics, so if one allows it to be split it’s OK.

18. Re #13 and #15. As the lanthanide elements tend to have similar properties, Ln for lanthanide is a convenient shorthand used by chemists in much the same way as they use R for a reactive group attached to a particular molecule, X, say, giving a general formula RX for a series of derivatives of X.

19. PB@16: This gets rather interesting. I overlooked the use of T for tension because I must have used it thousands of time in maths and physics problems without thought. There are two types of official abbreviation used in STEM. One set is laid down for units by the BIPM and endorsed through our own National Physical Laboratory as part of the SI system, which give us things like J for joule, N for newton etc. The second set is the abbreviations used for quantities (E for energy, F for force) which is a separate ISO standard. Both are in use in crosswords, although units tend only to come up where they can be disguised – henry (H) is a common trick. Nowhere in the ISO do I see reference to T for tension except as surface tension. So it seems this is not an official abbreviation for tension alone, despite its usage in every physics and maths text book.

    Now the nit-picking part. A physicist, mathematician or engineer would not be happy saying surface tension is a type of tension as they are totally separate concepts with different units. The name “surface tension” is old-fashioned and unfortunately misleading (just as “electromotive force” is not a force but a voltage. It’s not clever, it’s not helpful but it’s there now and it’s hard to change!) It’s hard to think of an non-science example but perhaps referring to a “prairie dog”, which is a rodent, as a “dog” would be a similar issue.

    Sorry – you said you did not want to open a floodgate and I just burst through like the three gorges damn collapsing. I hope it is not a total waste of time to read – I found the “at” discussion very informative and informed and I take pleasure in the way details on this blog get picked apart in such a precise and cordial manner

20. Simon@17 My understanding is that the general principle as far as allowable abbreviations in the FT are concerned is that they should appear in at least one of (a) Chambers, (b) Collins (complete and unabridged), (c) the Oxford Dictionary of English, and (d) the Concise Oxford Dictionary. (The Times and Telegraph have much reduced lists for their allowable single letter abbreviations.) It isn’t OK to split – to give an example of what would happen if that were permitted, A could stand for “Alcoholics” because AA is given for “Alcoholics Anonymous”. If the abbreviations used in this puzzle for “tension” and “lathanide” do not appear in the standard dictionaries that is not playing fair with solvers.

21. Rudolf @ 20

    That’s why I said IF!

22. Phssthpok, you defeated me today. Would it be rude of me to ask you, if you see this, to let us know the origin of your name, and how you pronounce it?

23. JOFT@19: Thank you for that. It was an interesting read. I could go on at great length about not expecting setters to conform to specialist meanings of words, but instead I will refer you to the comments on FT 17,755 (June 2024 – link below), where the setter Jason had the answer ONE-LINER in his grid, and clued LINER as “cruise ship”. However, I am not sure that my general argument will quite work here. I think I need “surface tension” to have its scientific meaning to justify the symbol T, although neither Chambers nor Collins specifies that the symbol only works with that meaning. It is sufficient for my argument that the plain English meaning of the word “tension” covers a meaning of “surface tension” for which the symbol T is valid. The first definition of tension in Collins is “the act of stretching or the state or degree of being stretched” (p 2038). I think that covers surface tension, but am prepared to accept that it may not.

    Enough for now, I think.

    Link to FT 17,755:
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2024/06/06/financial-times-17755-jason/

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